NATIONALGEOGRAPHICPHOTOGRAPHERJ. BAYLORROBERTS
Bedouin Herder and His Flock Drift Across Timeless Terrain
As tribesmen traverse the wilderness, they search for more caves, more scrolls.
Scholars believe some portions of the Qumran library turned up long before 1947.
Origen, a 3d-century Christian theologian, reported discovery of a Hebrew book "in a
jar near Jericho."
And a letter written about A.D. 800 by Timotheus I. Patriarch of
Seleucia. refers to "books. . .found ten years ago in a rock dwelling near Jericho."
common. Both worshiped as a community,
praying together, singing psalms, listening to
the reading and exposition of Scripture. Both
preserved the memory of their founders and
diligently composed new literature which em
bodied their beliefs. Both considered them
selves the "true Israel," the community of the
New Covenant. Both were persecuted minori
ties. Both looked upon celibacy as preferable
to marriage.
Scholars of all faiths recognize these paral
lels. They are facts. But, contrary to certain
exaggerated interpretations, they do not sug
gest that Christianity is only a latter-day
"successful" Essenism.
The reasons for the parallels are self
evident. The early Christian community then
thought of itself as a group within, not out
side, Judaism.
It therefore shared in the
whole Jewish heritage, using the Hebrew
Bible of the day and interpreting the role of
Jesus in terms inherited from the past. In
the same way, the organization of the early
Christian community followed patterns al
ready known in first-century Judaea.
808
In short, few theologians have ever con
sidered Christianity to be unique in the sense
that it had no precursors, no connections with
the past, no affinities to Judaean thought
patterns or modes of life. Jesus did not break
with the past; he pointedly declared that he
had not "come to destroy the law. .. but to
fulfil."
The Dead Sea Scrolls give us a new under
standing of the religious climate into which
Jesus was born. They provide us with new
insight into the particular elements of Judaism
that influenced Christian development. And,
for the first time, the hitherto mysterious
Essenes stand revealed to us. The story of
their spiritual struggle swells out of the past
like a mighty hymn.
Khirbat Qumran, high on its blighted ter
race, is now a dead ruin in a dead world.
Nothing grows in the bitter marl; nothing
stirs among the ancient stones. The sky
yawns emptily over the counterfeit blue of the
Dead Sea, and a lonely wind sighs through
the rubble. But at Khirbat Qumran, a long
time ago, men strove to find God.